The best teaching tool with which to develop financially adept children is the simple piggy bank, economic advisors agree. In the absence of a penny-eating pig, a money jar is an alternative savings institution.

Linda Horton, Norman, distributed big, glass containers to her grandchildren last summer when they started discussing this summer’s family reunion.

The former Oklahoma receiver made the high-dollar purchase earlier this year — top-end Mercedes Benzes cost as much as half a million dollars — and he spent a serious chunk of his paycheck from the Baltimore Ravens to buy the car. Still, it wasn’t an impulse buy.

Name: Alison Radecki Current financial situation: Will be debt-free by year-end, except for her mortgage and student loan.Largest amount of debt: nearly $30,000.Road to recovery: signed up for a debt repayment plan with the Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Central Oklahoma.

Jimmy and Lorri Scroggins married 15 years ago, and then built a new two-story, four-bedroom house for themselves and their four children from previous marriages, ages 15, 14, 13 and 8. Their goal was to have the house paid off by the time the youngest child graduated from high school.

They missed the goal by one year but the 30-year home loan was paid off in just 11 years. The couple have also bought and paid for four cars and saved money from tax refunds to pay for insurance costs for the home and cars and taxes on the house.

Name: Barbara and Charles Kostelecky, Midwest CityCurrent financial situation: The Kosteleckys live off of the retirement savings that Barbara Kostelecky, 74, accumulated during a 15-year nursing career at Midwest City Regional Hospital, from where she retired in 1996. Charles Kostelecky, 83, also has a small Teamsters Union pension he earned as a diesel mechanic for a trucking company.

NORMAN — When Herschel and Alison Thompson married in 1998, the couple had student loans totaling $28,000. Although committed to being good stewards of their money by living below their means, like most newlyweds the couple had trouble managing their spending.